My home is in central North Carolina. A friend told me recently that many new
homes do not have foundation vents. What's the story? Vents or no vents? Should
I seal mine off?

I suppose the floor area under the house is bare soil, i.e., the crawl
space. I think, in the cases of no vents, a moisture barrier (lots of
visquene) is placed on the ground, to keep the moisture/excess high
humidity from rising from the soil..... Making sure the soil is
sealed off well.

You might not want to permanently seal the vents, but just close them
off (after the visquene treatment). If you would ever need to
ventilate the area, they would still be at your service.

I'm several states away from you and your scenario is not applicable,
here, but my sister is near Statesville, NC. Her new home has no
vents and has visquene laid in the crawl space. You might want to
speak to a contractor to make sure my reasoning is correct or not.
Most of her crawl space is about 4'-5' high, so one can walk around,
in there. Her water heater is there, as is very easy access to
heating/cooling duct work, plumbing, dryer duct (to outer wall. The
dryer moisture is not vented into the crawl space), etc. I'm no
contractor, but when I visit her, I give those utilities an
inspection, for her. The visquene makes for a relatively clean work
area, under there, also, rather than working on bare soil.

I live in Indiana and my crawl space has visquene down on it but it also has vents. I would be worried that closing off the vents could possibly result in a moisture and mold problem even with visquene. The vents provide a decent air flow to keep things from getting damp or moldy.

NatalieD wrote:

I live in Indiana and my crawl space has visquene down on it but it also
has vents. I would be worried that closing off the vents could possibly
result in a moisture and mold problem even with visquene. The vents
provide a decent air flow to keep things from getting damp or moldy.

Absolutely! Closing off the foundation vents is about the worst thing you could
do for mold. It's not moisture rising from the ground, it's also from moisture
in the house.

mcp6453 wrote the following on 3/1/2012 6:40 PM (ET):
My home is in central North Carolina. A friend told me recently that many new
homes do not have foundation vents. What's the story? Vents or no vents? Should
I seal mine off?

The new houses probably have poured concrete floors in the crawl spaces,
just like a regular full height basement. They do here where I live.

--
Bill
In Hamptonburgh, NY
In the original Orange County. Est. 1683
To email, remove the double zeros after @

On Sun, 04 Mar 2012 17:27:04 -0500, willshak wrote:

mcp6453 wrote the following on 3/1/2012 6:40 PM (ET):
My home is in central North Carolina. A friend told me recently that many new
homes do not have foundation vents. What's the story? Vents or no vents? Should
I seal mine off?

The new houses probably have poured concrete floors in the crawl spaces,
just like a regular full height basement. They do here where I live.

Most of the houses I've seen around here have dirt of gravel crawl space
floors. A guy down the street (mine's on a slab) had a river flowing through
his and had to put many more tens of yards of gravel underneath. Even with a
concrete floor, it isn't impervious to moisture. I'd still want vents. The
consequences of mold are just too bad to play around with it.